U.S. Expected to Seek Scottish Trial in Hague for Pan Am Suspects

The Clinton Administration is expected to announce on Monday a proposal to create a Scottish court in the Netherlands to try two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am flight 103 jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, a decade ago, American officials said today.

The Administration has arranged a conference call Monday morning from Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and national security aAdviser Samuel R. Berger to relatives of the victims to tell them of the decision, the officials said.

It is not clear that Libya will accept the American proposal, although it is close to an alternative the Libyans had proposed.

The plan to hold a trial in The Hague, but under Scottish law and presided over by Scottish judges, was floated by the United States and Britain a month ago. It represents a turnaround for the Administration, which had previously said that the Libyans would have to be tried either in the United States or in Scotland for the December 1988 bombing, which killed 259 people on the plane and 11 others on the ground.

American officials said the proposal seemed a reasonable compromise. The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, has been campaigning to lift the United Nations economic sanctions imposed on Tripoli because of its refusal to hand over the two men, both Libyan intelligence agents, for trial. Colonel Qaddafi has proposed that the men be tried under Scottish law, though not in Scotland, by a panel of international judges, and he wants sanctions lifted once a trial begins.

American officials insisted today that the idea of Scottish judges in a trial under Scottish rules was ''non-negotiable,'' and said holding it in The Hague mattered less. The proposal would call Colonel Qaddafi's bluff, another official said, and if he refused, sanctions would remain.

But the relatives of some victims expressed concern that the Administration would weaken its conditions. Susan and Daniel Cohen of Cape May Court House, N.J., whose only child, Theodora, then 20, died in the bombing, oppose a compromise and said that they were skeptical that the Administration would keep its word.

''This compromise is a slippery slope,'' Mr. Cohen said today, ''and any terrorist could now say, 'I don't want to be tried in the U.S., I want to be tried in Bosnia' or wherever.''

Mrs. Cohen said that with British corporate pressure high to resume business with Libya, ''I have the terrible feeling we're being hustled here'' and that sanctions will be lifted prematurely.

''Too much is being made of these two individuals, and not enough is made of the fact that they are part of a government apparatus in Libya,'' Mrs. Cohen said. ''Berger and Albright told us personally that we can't move unilaterally against a terrorist country like Libya, that we need international support. But they just did it in Afghanistan and Sudan, which just makes this all more bizarre.''

An Administration official said the proposal had found support within the Organization for African Unity and the Arab League, and that Washington would press them to go public and urge Libya to comply.